Lost Classics I: Elastica - The Menace

In what will probably be an occasional series on this far-flung outpost of the worldwide interweb, I've decided that there are some records out there that are deserving of more recognition than they've been given in the past.

Some of these records will truly be "lost classics". Others may simply be records that I like that have been much-maligned by others. And some will be records that, whilst they are no classics, show a new or interesting side to an otherwise popular band, or have a handful of great tunes hidden away amongst the dross.

Elastica's second album The Menace, released in 2000, fits into the latter category. Released five years after their barnstorming Britpop debut, the album was almost unanimously panned by critics. In fact, it proved so unpopular that I managed to pick up a second-hand copy for two pounds just a few months after it had been released.

And in truth, it's not a great album - not even a very good album. But amidst Justine Frischmann's half-baked tunes and Trio covers, there are two or three small hints at the songwriting smarts behind Connection, 2:1 and Line Up.

It's easy, more than ten years later, to forget that Frischmann was Britpop royalty in 1995 - a former member of Suede who was half of the scene's number one couple as Damon Albarn's squeeze. Liam Gallagher's promise that he would shag her was one of the many incidents that sparked the Blur v Oasis feud.

But there was a five year gap between albums, and Britpop had long since died a death by the time The Menace was released.

Nonetheless, opening track Mad Dog sounds like Blur's later work, with off-beat drums and yelping vocals. Miami Nice could almost be The Cooper Temple Clause, with sparse electronic percussion and throbbing bass, and penultimate track The Way I Like It successfully blends acoustic guitars with Frischmann's disinterested drawl.

The final track on the album is a cover of Trio's Da Da Da, as unexpected as it is unnecessary. But strangely, amongst the irritating electronic bleeps and Damon Albarn's keyboards (Albarn was credited on the album under the pseudonym Norman Balda) what emerges is the track on the album that sounds most like the Elastica of old - spiky punk-inspired Britpop melodies that sound like a band enjoying themselves.

Elastica are long since a footnote in rock'n'roll history, consigned to the Britpop scrapheap alongside Sleeper, Menswe@r and countless other indie chancers. Oasis and Supergrass may continue to fly the flag for the class of 1995, with Damon Albarn and Graham Coxon ploughing their own post-Blur furrows and the reformed Shed Seven and Dodgy attempting to recapture former glories.

But, with the benefit of hindsight, Elastica's debut album deserves to be recognised as one of the hallmark records of that brief time when Camden seemed to be the centre of the rock'n'roll world. The Menace falls a long way short of that standard, but at times it acts as a small reminder of what Elastica were capable of. We should mourn the fact that, unlike Jarvis Cocker and the rest of the 1990s indie gliterrati, Justine Frischmann is no longer recording.